Christina Lubinski

• PhD
• Professor at Copenhagen Business School

Research on entrepreneurship remains underdeveloped and fragmented in business history today. A lack of conceptual clarity inhibits comparisons between studies and dialogue among scholars. We address these problems by drawing on both classical and recent scholarship to suggest the potential of " new entrepreneurial history " as a coherent sub-field...

Research summary We explore multinational strategy formation in the context of rising economic nationalism. Specifically, we examine how firms develop strategies to capitalize on the historical and aspirational attributes of national identity. Analyzing the histories of two German multinationals in late colonial India, we find that these firms enga...

The vibrant exchange between history and organization studies has triggered major debates on engaging historiography and theorizing with history. By comparison, studies of historical methods have received less attention. We argue that one missing debate concerns different typologies of sources, which facilitate systematic comparative analysis and i...

The concept of “generation” in family business scholarship is primarily used genealogically to reflect family lineage. This approach fails to account for complementary perspectives that are more established in history: “generation” as a category of societal belonging and a form of rhetorical history. Using a constitutive history approach, we identi...

Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise analyzes the role of nationalism in global business strategy, showing how multinationals act not just as drivers of globalization but also as sophisticated operators in a world of nations. Using the case study of German companies in colonial and post-colonial India, Christina Lubinski traces how nationali...

The first chapter explores the market entry of Germany’s large multinationals, exemplified by a detailed analysis of the electrical company Siemens and the chemical company Bayer, the two companies that pioneered German business with India in the 1870s. It shows how these large German players initially followed in their British rival’s footsteps an...

Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise analyzes the role of nationalism in global business strategy, showing how multinationals act not just as drivers of globalization but also as sophisticated operators in a world of nations. Using the case study of German companies in colonial and post-colonial India, Christina Lubinski traces how nationali...

Chapter 8 follows the Indo-German collaborations to the 1980s. Indias primary development goal was rapid industrialization and it invested heavily in imports from abroad, including from Germany, which turned into one of its most important trading partners. However, India also struggled with a chronic foreign exchange crisis, requiring development a...

Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise analyzes the role of nationalism in global business strategy, showing how multinationals act not just as drivers of globalization but also as sophisticated operators in a world of nations. Using the case study of German companies in colonial and post-colonial India, Christina Lubinski traces how nationali...

Chapter 5 follows German business strategy and Indo-German collaboration through the Great Depression and its aftermath. The depression ended India’s open-door policy and introduced preferential tariff treatment for British goods. At the same time, the German political landscape changed significantly with the Nazi Regime (1933–1945), re-shaping bot...

World War I sanctioned the economic rivalry between Germany and Great Britain by officially declaring the Germans political “enemies.” This created new lines of distinction in India, when the newly defined enemies were shunned from social clubs and saw their assets expropriated. German businessmen were rounded up in internment camps, supervised by...

Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise analyzes the role of nationalism in global business strategy, showing how multinationals act not just as drivers of globalization but also as sophisticated operators in a world of nations. Using the case study of German companies in colonial and post-colonial India, Christina Lubinski traces how nationali...

Chapter 4 traces how the German firms, big business and bazaar exporters alike, reentered India after World War I. It shows how the postwar situation triggered a joint sense of victimhood among Germans and Indians who both felt mistreated and exploited by the British, laying the groundwork for a mental map of nationalism that highlighted their para...

The final chapter draws out conclusions from a century of Indo-German relations. It shows the deep limits of treating nations and nationalism simplistically as barriers to international integration. The growing interconnectedness of the world did not challenge the ideas of nationalism but rather reinvigorated it. Nationalism is not the opposite of...

Indian Independence in 1947 marked a new beginning for Indo-German collaboration. Yet, it came first and foremost with continuities rather than abrupt change in the context of volatile political conditions. A host of unresolved problems awaited both newly independent India and post-war Germany. The growing tensions between Hindus and Muslim in Indi...

Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise analyzes the role of nationalism in global business strategy, showing how multinationals act not just as drivers of globalization but also as sophisticated operators in a world of nations. Using the case study of German companies in colonial and post-colonial India, Christina Lubinski traces how nationali...

German business in India advanced not only in the business-to-business sector, as seen in the previous chapter, but also in the Indian bazaar, and many observers testified to the universally available and very visible products “Made in Germany.” Chapter 2 shows how German exporters entered the Indian bazaar by tracing two of the most competitive ex...

Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise analyzes the role of nationalism in global business strategy, showing how multinationals act not just as drivers of globalization but also as sophisticated operators in a world of nations. Using the case study of German companies in colonial and post-colonial India, Christina Lubinski traces how nationali...

Continuing the chronology, Chapter 6 focuses on World War II, and the year immediately leading up to it. It focuses on the extensive investments in cloaking and “Indianization,” and how these efforts failed to protect German companies from renewed expropriation once the war broke out. Despite intense planning, the war put a temporary end to German...

Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise analyzes the role of nationalism in global business strategy, showing how multinationals act not just as drivers of globalization but also as sophisticated operators in a world of nations. Using the case study of German companies in colonial and post-colonial India, Christina Lubinski traces how nationali...

Considerations about the legitimacy of futures trading have been ubiquitous in the highly integrated world economy since the late nineteenth century. This article compares two national debates in Germany and British India from the 1880s to the 1930s. Despite significant differences in the cultural and economic contexts of the two countries and in t...

While most research on family business longevity focuses on how internal corporate governance issue impact resilience, the aim of this article is to foreground the relevance of external environmental factors, and to do so in an internationally comparative perspective. By historically comparing the largest family businesses in Germany and Spain in t...

Ross Bassett. The Technological Indian. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016. 386 pp. ISBN 978-0-674-50471-4, $39.95 (cloth). - Volume 20 Issue 4 - Christina Lubinski

Research has made great strides in understanding how and why organizational actors use the past. So far, scholars have largely focused the level of analysis on the organization, without exploring the intertwined nature of historical claim-making with the organizational field or society at large. This article extends the status quo by conceptualizin...

The activities of multinationals in India have so far been described as a British–Indian story. However, the British Empire was never an impenetrable economic area, but, rather, a contact zone for firms of many different origins. This article diversifies the historiography of Indian business history by tracing the commercial interactions between Ge...

The Emergence of Routines: Entrepreneurship, Organization, and Business History. Edited by Daniel M. G. Raff and Philip Scranton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. xii + 358 pp. Figures, notes, index. Cloth, $90.00. ISBN: 978-0-19-878776-1. - Volume 92 Issue 1 - Christina Lubinski

Internment in so-called ‘enemy countries’ was a frequent occurrence in the twentieth century and created significant obstacles for multinational enterprises (MNEs). This article focuses on German MNEs in India and shows how they addressed the formidable challenge of the internment of their employees in British camps during both the First and the Se...

Research on entrepreneurship remains fragmented in business history. A lack of conceptual clarity inhibits comparisons between studies and dialogue among scholars. To address these issues, we propose to reinvent entrepreneurial history as a research field. We define “new entrepreneurial history” as the study of the creative processes that propel ec...

During the first global economy, roughly from Western industrialization to World War I, the gramophone, much like other consumer goods, circulated relatively freely around the world. This paper compares the market in India and China asking how gramophone companies established themselves there and focuses on the interaction between Western businessp...

This article analyzes the German dye business in India before 1947 as an example of expanding German-Indian commercial relationships. German dye manufacturers showed great interest in India's economic potential in the absence of discriminatory tariffs, while Indian elites were interested in non-British Western partners, which could support their st...

Emerging markets trigger great expectations. Many foreign multinationals are eager to exploit the entrepreneurial opportunities potentially related to less developed but fast growing markets. This is not a new phenomenon. Multinationals from more developed countries have for long searched for opportunities in less developed markets and have dealt w...

Multinational corporations face the challenge of balancing global integration and local responsiveness. Localization strategies have been much debated in the literature, and scholars have suggested the 1980s as a watershed moment leading to the development of distinctly transnational companies sensitive to both global and local demands. The gramoph...

Much of international business literature has dealt with the costs of engaging in business abroad. Recently, several authors have called into question the basic assumptions of the “liability of foreignness” argument. They plead for a more nuanced look at nationality beyond the dichotomy of foreign vis-à-vis local firms and raise doubts about the as...

Much of international business literature has dealt with the costs of engaging in business abroad. Recently, several authors have called into question the basic assumptions of the “liability of foreignness” argument. They plead for a more nuanced look at nationality beyond the dichotomy of foreign vis-à-vis local firms and raise doubts about the as...

This article examines the evolution of corporate environmentalism in the West German chemical industry between the 1950s and the 1980s. It focuses on two companies, Bayer and Henkel, and traces the evolution of their environmental strategies in response to growing evidence of pollution and resulting political pressures. Although German business has...

In contrast to widespread assessments that family enterprises lack sufficient resources and capabilities to go global, many family companies are competing successfully in an increasingly globalized business environment. Worldwide, a large number of thriving multinationals are still family-owned and/or under family control. While there is abundant l...

Katja Girschik offers a business and technology history of the Swiss retail trade that focuses on computerized “checkout counter technologies” between 1970 and 1975. Charmingly titled When Cash Registers Learned How to Read and based on her dissertation for the University of Zurich, Girschik won the 2009 Prize for Business History from the German S...

This working paper examines the growth of corporate environmentalism in the West German chemical industry between the 1950s and the 1980s. It focuses on two companies, Bayer and Henkel and traces the evolution of their environmental strategies in response to growing evidence of pollution and resulting political pressures. Although German business h...

This article is concerned with business strategies of political risk management during the twentieth century. It focuses especially on Beiersdorf, a pharmaceutical and skin care company in Germany. During World War I, the expropriation of its brands and trademarks revealed its vulnerability to political risk. Following the advent of the Nazi regime...

Dynastic family businesses pursue a double aim. They strive for economic success and attempt to shield the family's longterm influence against outsiders. As a consequence, their choice of governance reflects an idiosyncratic balance between remaining independent and tapping into the opportunities of the market. Autonomy-oriented “closed” governance...

This case examines the management of home and host country risk by Beiersdorf during the interwar years. It can be used both in business history courses and more generally to teach political risk management by multinational corporations. Beiersdorf, a German personal products company, expanded globally before 1914, but had its foreign factories and...

Do family firms rise and decline in three generations? Not only since Thomas Mann's “The Buddenbrooks” has the survival rate of family firms intrigued family business scholars, practitioners and consultants. In this article, we trace the family firm survival rate to its roots and discuss its empirical basis and univocal reading. We then ask how the...

This article is concerned with business strategies of political risk management during the twentieth century. It focuses especially on Beiersdorf, a pharmaceutical and skin care company in Germany. During World War I, the expropriation of its brands and trademarks revealed its vulnerability to political risk. Following the advent of the Nazi regime...

Family business scholars have argued that succession entails all actions and events that occur between generations to transfer ownership and/or management. Building on this definition, I focus explicitly on the period prior to the successor's entering the business. I borrow the concept of "anticipatory socialization" from organizational so-ciologis...

Between family heritage and global market. Changes in ownership and management of large West-German family firms (1960-2008) Large family firms fall between two theoretical accounts. They neither follow the development path described by Alfred D. Chandler nor do they resemble small- and medium sized Mittelstand firms, which Gary Herrigel highlight...

Based upon the theory of "Flexible Specialization" this article reconsiders some central assumptions of the historiography of industrialization (e.g. centralization of work, de-skilling of workers). Furthermore, the example of the engineering workshop within the big iron and steel company JHH broadens the theory in two respects: Firstly, it questio...

Mikropolitik Magisterarbeit Maschinenbau flexible Spezialisierung

Based upon the theory of "Flexible Specialization" this article reconsiders some central assumptions of the historiography of industrialization (e.g. centralization of work, de-skilling of workers). Furthermore, the example of the engineering workshop within the big iron and steel company JHH broadens the theory in two respects: Firstly, it questio...